314 TPIOUGHTS UPON HITNTIKG. 



this diversion. I can assure you, it has provoked me 

 often, and has made even a parson szvear : — it was but 

 the other day that we experienced an extraordinary instance 

 of it : we found at the same instant a brace of foxes 

 in the same cover 3 and they both broke at the opposite 

 ends of it. The hounds soon got together, and went off 

 very well with one of them; yet notwithstanding this, 

 such was our ill-hick, that, though the hunted fox took 

 a circle of several miles, he at last crossed the line of the 

 other fox ; the heel of which we hunted back to the cover 

 from whence we came : it is true, we perceived that our 

 scent worsted, and were going to stop the hounds; but the 

 eoinp" offijf a Vvhite frost deceived us also in that. 



o o 



Many a fox have 1 known lost by running into houses 

 and stables. It is Jiot long since my hounds lost one^ 

 when hunting in the Nev/ Forest : — after having tried the 

 country round, they had given him up, and were gotten 

 home; when in rode a farmer, full gallop, with news of 

 the fox : he had found him, he said, in his stable, and 

 had shut him in. The hounds returned : the fox, how- 

 ever, stood but a little while, as he was quite run up 

 before. 



